Surgical lasers, particularly CO.sub.2 lasers are presently used for cutting or ablating tissues in various confined body cavities. One recently developed application of lasers is in the treatment of snoring. A common cause of snoring is a long uvula (the small, conical, fleshy mass of tissue suspended from the center of the soft palate above the back of the tongue) and redundant soft pallet that vibrates during respiration. Occasionally, snoring is accompanied by an enlargement of the tonsils. In the surgical treatment of snoring, the surgeon performs a vertical resection of the soft palate on both sides of the uvula, sparing the uvula itself, with further ablation with the laser of the lateral and inferior sides of the uvula to create a "new uvula" that is higher and smaller (uvulopalatoplasty). Surgical lasers are also used for reshaping or removing the tonsils (tonsillectomy), and for removing or reshaping posterior parts of the tongue (glossectomy).
During such applications of surgical lasers it is desirable and necessary that the work area be maintained as free from smoke and vaporized tissue as possible. It is also necessary that the patient's tongue be kept away from working area. These requirements are necessary to provide a clear view of the working area for the surgeon, and to prevent contamination of the lens included in such apparatus that is used for focussing or defocussing the laser beam on the working area.
While a pharyngeal handpiece typical of the prior art, removes some of the smoke and vaporized tissue during laser applications, it does not remove it rapidly enough to keep the area fully visible for the doctor or to prevent contamination of the lens. Additionally, while a prior art tongue depressor prevents the patient's tongue from interfering with the operation, it occupies one of the surgeon's hands while accomplishing very little. Further, while the foregoing problems are particularly troublesome with respect to the above described applications for surgical lasers, they are also present to some degree in many other applications of surgical lasers.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a tongue blade evacuation device for eliminating or reducing the foregoing problems during surgical laser applications.
It is another object of the invention to provide a more efficient system for controlling a patient's tongue and for removing smoke and vaporized tissue from a patient's mouth during laser surgery.
It is another object of the invention to provide a device to be used in conjunction with a pharyngeal handpiece to increase the rate of smoke and vaporized tissue evacuation from a patient's mouth during laser surgery.
It is still another object of the invention to provide a method of controlling a patient's tongue and evacuating smoke and vaporized tissue from a patient's mouth during laser surgery.